The document provides guidelines for creating the perfect CV, including sections to include such as personal details, a personal profile, employment history, education, interests and achievements, additional information, and references. The personal profile should summarize skills, qualifications, work background, and career aims in a few lines to grab the reader's attention. The employment history section should list experience in reverse chronological order, with details on duties and achievements using action verbs. Education should include qualifications, dates, and grades. Interests should be relevant to the job and show sociability.

1. Building the perfect CV
Follow the guidelines below to make sure you’ve included all the important information an employer
may need.
1.Your personal details: name, address and contact details.
It’s up to you whether you include your age, marital status and nationality. Recruiters should be able
to make a decision about your skills and abilities without this information. If you’re adding your email
address to your contact details make sure that it sounds professional and creates the right
impression. You may also want to add a link to a professional social media website like LinkedIn. If
you do, check that the website shows you in a positive light and doesn’t contain anything you wouldn’t
want an employer to see.
2.Your personal profile:
Your personal profile is a mini-advert for you and should summarise your:
•skills and qualities
•work background and achievements
•career aims
It should only be a few lines and must grab the reader’s attention. Try to avoid over-used terms, such
as ‘reliable’, ‘hard working’, ‘team player’, ‘good communication skills’ etc. These general terms are
heard very often and they don’t help an employer to build up a picture of you. For example, if the job
involves working with people, try to highlight relevant, specific people skills such as: negotiating,
effectively dealing with demanding customers, presentation skills, handling conflict, or showing
empathy. These help the reader build up more of a picture of your skills, knowledge and experience.
Be brief – you can go into more detail and highlight examples of your skills in later sections. When
you’re summarising your career aims, think about the employer you are sending the CV to. It will hit
home with employers if your career aims sound exactly like the kind of opportunities they currently
have.
3.Employment history and work experience
If you’ve been working for a while, put your employment history first. If you don’t have much work
experience, you might like to highlight your education and training. In this section you should start with

2. your present or most recent job and work backwards. You should include employer, the dates you
worked for them, job title and your main duties. Provide more detail on the relevant jobs you’ve had
and give examples of the skills you used and what you achieved.
Use bullet pointed lists and positive language. Try thinking of ‘action’ words that you can use to
describe what you did in your job, like achieved, designed, established, supervised, co-ordinated,
created or transformed. Try to relate your skills and experience to the job description, person
specification or what you think the employer is looking for, if you’re sending your CV on spec. Also
include any relevant temporary work and volunteering experience. Avoid unexplained gaps in your
employment history. If you had time out travelling, job seeking, volunteering or caring for a relative,
include this along with details of what you’ve learned and skills you’ve gained.
4.Education and training
Start with your most recent qualifications and work back to the ones you got at school.
Using bullet points or a table include:
 the university, college or school you went to
 the dates the qualifications were awarded and grades
 any work-related courses, if they’re relevant
5.Interests and achievements
Include hobbies, interests and achievements that are relevant to the job.
For example, if you’re involved in any clubs or societies this can show that you enjoy meeting new
people. Interests like sports and physical recreation activities can also show employers that you are fit
and healthy.
Try to avoid only putting activities that you would do alone like reading, bird-watching or playing video
games, unless they relate directly to the job that you are applying for. They may leave employers
wondering how sociable you are. Make your activities specific and interesting!
6.Additional information
You can include this section if you need to add anything else that’s relevant, such as explaining that a
gap in your employment history was due to travel or family reasons. You could also include other
relevant skills here such as if you have a driving licence or can speak any foreign languages.
7.References
At least one referee should be work-related. Or, if you haven’t worked for a while, you could use
another responsible person who has known you for some time.
You can list your referees on your CV or just put ‘references available on request’. If you decide to
include their details you should state the relationship of each referee to you – for example ‘Jim West,
Manager’